Just thought i'd throw this out to anyone looking at different amps for these cans. I have an Asus STX which i've been using as a headphone amp and been pretty happy with them so far. However, i have been reading alot of the "vintage amp" thread and decided to see if i could improve on the sound without spending alot.

I picked up an old Sansui amp. Signal route is: stx rca out > sansui aux in> sansui headphone out. Benefit of this is i still get the stx dac being used, and i get the power of the Sansui amp. Not going to go into graphic detail here as anyone can read the thread, but in older amplifiers, the headphone jack is hooked directly into the power supply just as the speaker outs are. Thats not really done today. The result is very very good sound with lots of power to spare to run harder to drive cans .My Q701's sounded awesome before, but now have a bit of added warmth and lots of power to drive them.

I spent a total of $50 for the amp by the way. Pretty confident they would run even the hd800's with ease and sound great. Thats just about the cheapest headphone amp you could buy. Maybe a tad bigger than most, but if its just sitting on your computer desk who cares. If anyone out there has done something similar please share what your using.

This is partially correct. Usually the headphone out is wired to the speaker outs with a resistor in between. This raises the impedance of the headphone out which makes it more suitable for high impedance cans. That's not to say it won't work with lower impedance cans though.

I guess I might be the only person that has no problems with the bumps on the q701. I dont ever have pain from them even after hours of wear. The clamp from my sennheiser 558's bother me more and are less comfortable in my opinion.

Same here, I dont own anymore the Q701 but I never noticed the bumps untill I read about experiences on this thread.

Just thought i'd throw this out to anyone looking at different amps for these cans. I have an Asus STX which i've been using as a headphone amp and been pretty happy with

them so far. However, i have been reading alot of the "vintage amp" thread and decided to see if i could improve on the sound without spending alot.

I picked up an old Sansui amp. Signal route is: stx rca out > sansui aux in> sansui headphone out. Benefit of this is i still get the stx dac being used, and i get the power of the Sansui amp. Not going to go into graphic detail here as anyone can read the thread, but in older amplifiers, the headphone jack is hooked directly into the power supply just as the speaker outs are. Thats not really done today. The result is very very good sound with lots of power to spare to run harder to drive cans .My Q701's sounded awesome before, but now have a bit of added warmth and lots of power to drive them.

I spent a total of $50 for the amp by the way. Pretty confident they would run even the hd800's with ease and sound great. Thats just about the cheapest headphone amp you could buy. Maybe a tad bigger than most, but if its just sitting on your computer desk who cares. If anyone out there has done something similar please share what your using.

someone's going to call me a bItch for doing this, but those old amps use a series resistor between the power amp output and the headphone jack. so the headphone jack has an output impedance somewhere between 120 and 470 Ohms

^ My Q701 has always sounded fine with a high output impedance. No change at all that I could detect. I have an old Technics receiver with a 330 ohm output impedance and the Q701 (and strangely my 38 ohm DJ100) sounds great with it.

No extra bass or any of that nonsense.

If 330 ohm isn't enough to mess it up than the 10ohm output of the Fiio E9 probably wont' be a problem

Oh and the E17 adds some extra warmth to the Q701. I kind of like that. I doubt most people would notice it, but it's definitely there. This is only in comparison to something like the ODAC/Modi though.

I use my E17 with my Xbox and Bedroom TV all the time and it drives the Q701 very well somehow. Of course it's not as good as my main setup but not too bad.

^ My Q701 has always sounded fine with a high output impedance. No change at all that I could detect. I have an old Technics receiver with a 330 ohm output impedance and the Q701 (and strangely my 38 ohm DJ100) sounds great with it.

No extra bass or any of that nonsense.

The 70x impedance is flat up to 1kHz, so that part of the spectrum should not be affected by amp impedance. It then gradually rises, which would mean the treble will increase with higher amp impedances, but not that much since the 'phones impedance only rises by 2/3. In this aspect the 70x is quite different from most dynamics, which have a driver resonance peak at around 100 Hz (hence having more bass with higher amp impedance) -- for example, the HD598 has "nominal" impedance of 60 ohm yet rises to 300 (5 times!) at 100 Hz.

Your receiver is probably not that resolved in the treble anyway, so the change is probably not noticeable.

^ My Q701 has always sounded fine with a high output impedance. No change at all that I could detect. I have an old Technics receiver with a 330 ohm output impedance and the Q701 (and strangely my 38 ohm DJ100) sounds great with it.

No extra bass or any of that nonsense.

If 330 ohm isn't enough to mess it up than the 10ohm output of the Fiio E9 probably wont' be a problem

Oh and the E17 adds some extra warmth to the Q701. I kind of like that. I doubt most people would notice it, but it's definitely there. This is only in comparison to something like the ODAC/Modi though.

I use my E17 with my Xbox and Bedroom TV all the time and it drives the Q701 very well somehow. Of course it's not as good as my main setup but not too bad.

+1

One thing I've found out is that the amp side of the E17 is what gives the overall sound a touch of warmth. When I use the E17 as DAC only(side switch activated) docked to the E9K, the warmth disappears. Anyway, great little portable amp for the price and pairs quite nicely with Q701, IMO.